


I don't know what I'm doing, or going to do

by thisismetrying



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Compliant, Drug Addiction, F/M, Family Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Post Series, Post-Canon, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28521963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying
Summary: Yes, she’s been vomiting, and she’s been eating more, and her breasts are sore, and she’s realized she’s skipped her period, and she’s been achy, but surely there must be another explanation for this. She refuses to think about what she’ll do if she’s wrong. She won’t be wrong.She doesn’t think she’s ever felt more alone.orBeth comes home from Moscow and has to make some choices
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 117
Kudos: 260





	1. Beth

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this plot bunny running around in my head for the past few days and just had to get it out, so here it is

She throws up on the plane back from Moscow. Her handler looks at her somewhat sympathetically when she shuffles back to her seat from the cramped airplane bathroom and orders a Coke to try to wash the taste from her mouth.

“Flying will do that to some people,” he remarks. Beth just nods, too tired to point out that this usually doesn’t happen to her and it must be the airplane food instead. Hell, it could even be the long-overdue withdrawal effects from not taking her tranquilizer pills for so long. Who knows. She sleeps the rest of the way back.

She throws up again when they land in D.C. Her handler makes another comment, something about nerves and meeting the present. She doesn’t remember him being this chatty in the Soviet Union. She wishes he would just shut up.

She makes it through the rest of D.C. and the photo op with the president without another vomiting incident, though there’s a few times she feels the urge to upchuck. Well, that would certainly be one way to make the front page. She doesn’t though, but she does still make the front pages of all the important newspapers, even if some of them are below the fold.

Beth books her flight back to Lexington as soon as she can. A part of her is glad she couldn’t go right home, back to the empty house that still has booze and a stash of tranquilizers. Glad she’s had the distraction of all the press and photo ops. But the other part can’t wait to get home, where she just wants to crawl into her bed and sleep. She is so very tired.

She takes a cab back to her to house in Lexington and doesn’t even undress before promptly passing out from fatigue in her bed. She’s barely makes it upstairs. Better than passing out from booze, she supposes.

She feels better in the morning, but there’s still a sprig of nausea she has to tamp down. She lays in bed for an hour before getting up. When she does, she realizes she’s famished. Downstairs, she realizes she only has eggs that are on the verge of going bad, but she makes two anyway and resolves to go to the grocery store. She finishes off the eggs within minutes of putting them on the plate, and then makes two more. She eats those too.

She sorts through all the mail that came in while she was away. The local newspaper has a lengthy article on her, detailing her game in Moscow and her rise in the chess world. The byline reads “D.L. Townes.” She smiles, and thinks of her friend (because yes, she can truly call him that now).

She also reads about a car crash that happened on a bridge nearby, leaving a small boy orphaned by his mother. She quickly flips to another section.

She sits at the table a while, the house quiet, the neighborhood quiet too, going along its suburban business. There’s the faint sound of a lawnmower a few doors over, but that’s all. She sets up a chess board, but finds she doesn’t want to play. At least she doesn’t want to play _alone._ Alone. There’s that word. _I’m alone,_ she thinks. She sits in the feeling, then shakes her head at herself. _No, not alone, just…by yourself right now._ She closes her eyes, and it takes her a little while, but she thinks back to Moscow, with Townes showing up and Benny and Harry and the others calling her, thinks back to Jolene loaning her the money to even go, thinks back to Alma and how she’d watch all her adopted daughter’s games even though she understood none of it, even thinks back to the dingy basement of Metheun, with Mr. Shaibel reluctantly teaching her to play chess. She’s been by herself plenty, but she hasn’t been truly alone in a long time.

Still, being by yourself can be a terrible feeling. Beth idly wonders if a Gibson wouldn’t help her feel less alone right now. Her thoughts of Gibsons and whether she had the proper ingredients are interrupted by a gurgle from her stomach. She’s still hungry, even after four eggs. She must have eaten less in Moscow than she thought. She goes to the fridge and breaks out the last egg from the carton. She’s _got_ to go to the grocery store today.

After she eats the last egg, she gets ready in her bathroom, The cabinet above the sink is still pushed open from when she hurriedly packed for the Soviet Union Inside is a bottle of little green and white pills. She stares at them a long time before reaching for them with a shaky hand. She pours them all out into her hand, and closes her fist around them. She’s torn between stuffing them all in her mouth, like she did when she was a little girl at Methuen, or flushing them down the toilet, like she did before her matches in Moscow. She’s about to stuff them in her mouth because maybe they’ll help take this loneliness, this ache in her, away. But then a voice nags at her _Really? You beat Borgov without pills or alcohol, just to come back to the states and do this?_ She’s not sure whose voice it is: if it’s Townes, or Jolene, or Benny, or Alma. Maybe it’s all of them. Maybe it’s none. Maybe it’s her own voice.

Finally, finally, she drops them, one by one, into the toilet. Then, she goes around the house and pulls bottles out of every place she can remember hiding them and does the same. She’s not sure she won’t be at the drugstore later today buying more, but it’s a start.

-

Her start is surprisingly promising. She doesn’t buy more little green pills and she doesn’t buy more alcohol.

But she is still Beth, and she still struggles. Sometimes, she walks all the way to the pharmacy, ready to spend all her traveler’s cheques on pills. But she doesn’t. She still has alcohol in the house, unable to bring herself to pour it down the drain.

Still, she doesn’t drink most days and she manages to eat more than she drinks, which is an improvement from before. In fact, she eats a lot more. She decides that her body must have really missed American food while in Moscow.

There are good days and not-so-good days, but that’s life, she decides. She is dealing with things one day at a time and, sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.

On the not-so-good days, when she feels her spirits plummet, she reaches for the liquor and pours herself a drink, welcoming the numbing feeling the alcohol brings. She doesn’t know what she’ll do when she runs out of liquor, but she decides she’ll deal with that when it comes. Sometimes, when she retches it all up, she swears she’s never going to touch the bottle again. She breaks her promise the next bad day, when everything feels a little too much.

She still feels nauseous sometimes, and she wonders if she got a bug while in Moscow, but she decides to wait to see if it passes. It is cold season, after all, and it’s probably nothing. (She hopes she’s not becoming like Alma, drinking and smoking herself to illness. The thought stops her cold and she doesn’t drink for a few days. The thought doesn’t stave her off forever though, and she pours herself a drink the next time the federation calls her, asking her to do some publicity favor, and she gets irrationally angry at them and she hangs up the phone and goes straight to the liquor cabinet).

The good days are good. She plays chess again, and studies. After all, she has to prepare for the world championship, a 24-game tournament against Borgov. She’s confident off her win in Moscow, but even she’s not so cocky as to feel like she needn’t study for such a monumental match. She lies in bed and looks at the ceiling, looks at the chess board and the pieces and plays games. She can do this now just fine, she realizes. And maybe, she could do this all by herself all along. That doesn’t stop her from wondering if the pills would make it all go faster, if they would help her heart stop racing when she thinks of the tournament to come. She smokes a cigarette instead.

She calls her friends, because yes, she does have friends. She calls Harry and Matt and Mike and they talk, and they even come over once where she plays them all simultaneously. (She defeats them all, of course, and finds herself bored before they even reach the middlegames, but the happiness she feels at having them there, at not being alone, outweighs her boredom and exasperation with their frankly amateur-like moves).

She calls Benny once, and she’s relieved when he doesn’t hang up the phone at her voice. Logically, she knows he called _her,_ in Moscow so the “don’t call me anymore” thing is probably moot, but the other part of her, the part of her that is still a little girl standing where her mother just drove the car into a bridge, tells her that that was a one-off, that he still doesn’t want to talk to her. They talk for a while, with her giving a play-by-play of her match with Borgov, even though they both know that he’s already read about it and replayed it on his set on his kitchen table a hundred times. He doesn’t tell her he misses her this time, but he does say he’ll be in Atlanta in a few weeks for a tournament, and he supposes he could drive by Kentucky on the way back—that is, if they’re both free and have nothing better to do. He says it so, so carefully, and Beth remembers when she didn’t return to New York and realizes how _hurt_ he was. She surprises herself by saying that it’d be really good to see him. She quickly adds that it’ll be nice to have an opponent whose actually somewhat decent.

She calls Jolene and they talk on the phone every few days, and when Jolene can finally get away from work, she comes down for the weekend.

Jolene greets her with a big smile, and a “Looks like you did it, Cracker,” and Beth gives her a big hug, surprising both herself and Jolene.

Beth presents Jolene with a check for the money she lent her and declares she’s taking her out to the nicest restaurant in town. The nicest restaurant in town, it turns out, is not so fancy, but it is still nice and Jolene smiles when Beth orders a Coke. She raises her eyebrows slightly when Beth orders an appetizer, and an entrée, and two sides. 

They chat and talk. Beth tells her all about the Soviet Union and playing Borgov and Jolene tells her about her job, and how she got a salary bump, and her lawyer boyfriend proposed again (she’d said no), and how she’s going to start applying to law school soon. Beth shares her progress with Jolene. Jolene is impressed, though she clucks her tongue when Beth admits to drinking still. At least she’s being honest though. Beth quickly changes the subject.

“Did you see the story a few weeks ago in the paper about the kid whose parents died in that car crash?” Beth asks. She doesn’t know why she brings it up, but she does.

Jolene nods. “I did,” she says carefully.

Beth _really_ doesn’t know why she’s brought this up. She spears some asparagus and chews thoughtfully. “I wonder what will happen to him.”

“The boy?” Jolene also looks thoughtful. They never really discussed their parents, but Jolene knows enough to know that Beth’s thinking about her mom and her circumstances of being orphaned. “I don’t know. I suppose go to the boy-version of Metheun. Maybe become a chess champion, maybe become a lawyer. Maybe neither. Who knows?”

Now Beth nods. “Maybe.” She suddenly thinks of all the girls and boys (but mostly the girls, if she’s being honest), who don’t get the chance to become a chess champion, who don’t have a Mr. Shaibel to teach them chess, even if it is in a musty old basement. She knows she’s special and she knows she’s got a gift, but she also knows she wouldn’t have found it out if not for Mr. Shaibel. Again, she’s reminded that she’s never really been alone, save for the few hours between her mother dying and arriving at Metheun. But she doesn’t want to dwell on that; she wants to be here, in this moment, with Jolene, laughing and talking and eating in a nice restaurant.

And eat a lot she does. She finishes all she’s order and then orders dessert, even though Jolene insists she’s full.

“Living it up there, aren’t you?” Jolene asks. The Beth she remembers from Metheun would take hours to finish her food (of course, the food was disgusting so there was that, but still, even before she left for Moscow, Jolene doesn’t remember her eating this much, even after they would work out together).

“Yeah,” Beth says between mouthfuls. “I’ve been hungrier ever since I got back. Maybe I got a Russian bug over there,” she says non-chalantly.

“Well, Cracker, you couldn’t have told me that before I came and visited you?”

“Sorry,” Beth shrugs her shoulders. She honestly forgot. Alma was always sick, and at some point, illness had just become a regular part of her life. She sometimes forgets that her life is not at all normal, and never has been. “It’s not that bad, and I don’t think it’s contagious,” she says, trying to be helpful.

“Relax, Cracker. We’ll pick up some vitamins on the way home.” Jolene grins, “It’ll be just like Metheun.”

-

They stop at Bradley’s on the way home and Beth, surprisingly, doesn’t feel the urge to get a bottle of the little green pills. Not that she would, with Jolene right here.

They do get vitamins, and some Cokes, and Beth picks up a copy of _Chess Review_. She also adds some ibuprofen tablets to the pile, saying to Jolene, “I’ve been a bit achy lately,” as way of explanation. And she has. She doesn’t know (doesn’t really want to know, if she’s completely honest), if it’s from the drinking or this Russian bug or from years of taking those pills. Either way, her back has been killing her lately and these help.

Jolene shrugs and glances at the copy of _Chess Review_ on the counter while they wait for Mr. Bradley to help the customer ahead of them. Benny is on the cover, this being last month’s issue, written before she went to Moscow. She’ll be on the cover of next month’s issue. _So that’s how he paid for that phone call,_ Beth mused when she first saw it.

“This your guy?” Jolene asks, nudging Beth’s shoulder.

“He’s not my guy,” Beth says, brusquely, maybe a little too brusquely. “He’s a friend,” she explains.

“The one you stayed with in New York and who called you in Moscow?” Jolene pushes.

“Yeah,” Beth replies. “But others were there too, when he called.” She shuffles awkwardly.

“But you slept with him,”

“Well, I slept with Harry too,” Beth hedges. She knows it was different, but Jolene doesn’t know that. If she’s being honest, she’s tried very hard _not_ to think too much about Benny and what they were to each other. Some things, she thinks, are better left alone, even if they do make her feel lonesome sometimes. 

“Who knew you were such a cocksucker, Cracker,” Jolene says playfully.

“Jolene!” Beth goes to shove the other woman when she notices Mr. Bradley is right there in front of them, and Beth’s cheeks turn a bright shade of red.

“Will this be all?” Mr. Bradley asks in his monotone voice.

“Well, actually, I think Beth here needs a box of cond-” Jolene starts before Beth elbows her.

“Yes, that will be all.”

God, she is going to kill Jolene. Or she would, if she didn’t love her so much.

-

The rest of Jolene’s visit goes swimmingly, though Beth is sick for the latter half of Jolene’s last full day, vomiting up the hefty lunch she had. She feels better by nighttime though, and they go to see a movie; a pretty good end to Jolene’s visit, Beth thinks. She hasn’t drank at all the entire weekend.

Just as Beth is getting into bed, Jolene comes into her room and sits on her bed. This is both familiar and warm and Beth wonders if this is what having a sister is like.

“I have a question for you and I want you to answer it straight.”

Beth groans inwardly, thinking that Jolene has found her extra secret stash of tranquilizers that she keeps around, just in case. She hasn’t touched them, hasn’t taken one since she got back, but when it came down to it, she just couldn’t throw them away. Just having them in the house, just knowing that they were at her disposal if things got _really_ bad—well, she needed that peace of mind. “Yes?”

“Are you pregnant?”

Jolene’s question throws her totally off-guard. She thinks her jaw must drop a little. “Jolene,” she says, trying to take this seriously, since Jolene has a serious look to her face, but then she can’t and she bursts out laughing. “What? You think I’m _pregnant?_ ” she says, almost indignantly.

Jolene doesn’t laugh. “Look, you’ve been saying you’ve been nauseous the past few weeks, you’re eating a lot, and you’ve got aches,” she lays out the facts in a precise, lawyerly manner.

Beth calms herself down from laughing. “Yes, because of a _bug_ , Jolene.” She meets Jolene’s eyes. “I’m not pregnant. I couldn’t be,” she says confidently. “Those symptoms are just as common to a stomach bug as to pregnancy and a million other illnesses.”

“You’re sure? Because…” Jolene gestures to Beth’s stomach. “Not that I’m not glad you’re eating more and putting on more weight—you always were too skinny in my book—but are you sure?”

“Did you just call me fat?” Maybe having a sister isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“No, Cracker, I’m just asking,” Jolene says. Seeing Beth’s still incredulous stare, she laughs a little. “Alright, alright, I believe you.”

“Thank you.”

“I was just worried about you.”

“I know.”

Beth surprises herself (she’s been full of surprises lately, she guesses), and hugs Jolene then, and if she had been feeling lonely at all lately, all of that seems to evaporate when Jolene hugs her back tightly.

-

Beth’s at the department store looking at some pretty dresses (Jolene was right about one thing, she has been gaining a bit more weight, but not _that_ much more weight) when it hits. A sales lady is spraying around samples of the latest perfume and Beth _gags_. She rushes to the restroom and makes it just in time to heave into a sink. Not her most elegant so far, but she made it and none of it’s on her clothes, so that’s something, at least.

She’s wiping her face with the coarse paper towels when she hears someone coming out of the stall behind her. _Of course,_ she thinks, _of course, someone would have to be here to hear that._

And of course, because she might just be having the worse luck today, it turns out that that someone coming out of the stall is Margaret, the Apple Pi from high school.

She remembers the last time she saw Margaret, right here in this very department store, actually, and how the liquor bottles in the bottom of the stroller had rattled around. God, she just wants to go home and have a drink.

“Beth Harmon!” Margaret exclaims. “How nice to see you,” she starts, and then puts together the sounds and Beth’s presence. “Oh…was that you out here?” She gestures toward the sink, as if that explains everything. “Are you okay?” She eyes Beth warily.

Beth figures there’s no use in denying it. “Yes,” she says awkwardly. “They were spraying perfume out there,” she tries to explain, though she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t owe this girl any explanation, even if she did just vomit in the sink in front of her.

“Ah,” Margaret says, with a knowing air. Beth inwardly rolls her eyes. Margaret never knew anything. “Your first trimester then?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re in your first trimester?” Margaret asks, as though Beth’s daft.

Then Beth gets it. _Jesus, why does everyone keep thinking I’m pregnant? I’ll have to lay off those TV dinners._ She stands there, warring between annoyance and laughing it off.

“I was the same way with my first,” Margaret continues gently. “Couldn’t stand smells and would just retch in the middle of the day. Mike was such a dear, taking care of me,” she says dreamily, and then her eyes snap to Beth and she smiles a little too brightly. “I didn’t know you were married, Beth. Who did you tie the knot with?”

Beth knows that Margaret knows that she’s not married. Their suburb is small and if Beth Harmon, chess champion, had gotten married, everyone would have known about it. But Margaret must want Beth to admit it. She always did want to feel superior.

But it doesn’t matter. “I’m not pregnant,” she says firmly and goes back to washing her hands.

Margaret’s face falls a little, the juicy piece of gossip she caught slipping right out of her hands. “Oh, my apologies,” she says, and has the decency to look embarrassed at the faux pas. She washes her hands quickly and exits, leaving Beth alone.

Beth stares at herself in the mirror. Yes, as she’s already admitted to herself, she’s been gaining weight, but she’s not taking the pills or drinking as much, and often, she used to be so high or drunk that she had simply forgotten to eat. She’s sure she must have eaten just as much at Benny’s apartment in New York while training, during her forced sobriety.

_Benny’s apartment…in New York…a bunch of weeks ago…_

“Shit,” she says aloud and does the math and goes over the facts Jolene had so smoothly presented to her just a few days ago, while she had sworn she was _not_ pregnant.

-

She’s freaking out and all she wants is one of her little green tranquilizer pills. She’s been so good lately, but god, she needs _something._ She settles for a drink at the bar across the street.

 _How does one even find out if they’re pregnant?_ She thinks between sips.

 _I suppose I’ll have to make that doctor’s appointment after all,_ she thinks glumly.

After she finishes her drink, she uses the payphone in the bar to call her doctor’s office and schedules an appointment. As luck would have it, the receptionist tells her a cheery voice, they had a last minute cancellation and they can fit her in today, if she would like. Beth replies that she would like that very much, and then hangs up to call the cab.

She gets to the doctor’s office and sits, tapping her foot while she waits. It feels like she waits there forever, but when her name is finally called, she realizes it’s only been 25 minutes.

As soon as the door is securely closed behind the doctor, she cuts straight to the point. “I think I might be pregnant.” This is the first time she’s said the words aloud in the three hours since she’s taken this as a serious possibility and she feels positively ill. Maybe she’s not pregnant after all, maybe she’s just dying.

The doctor is infuriatingly calm and Beth wants to shake him. She supposes though, that this perhaps isn’t an irregular occurrence for him. “Well, Ms. Harmon, can you tell me a little bit about why you think you might be pregnant, and when you think the conception date would be?”

She hurriedly lists off her symptoms, also adding that she’s traveled recently so perhaps it’s that, and gives her best estimate of when it might have happened.

The doctor simply nods sagely and takes notes. “It certainly sounds like you’re pregnant, Ms. Harmon. Of course, I can’t be sure without a test, but you have all the symptoms and the timeline makes sense.”

“Can you do the test?” She asks immediately. She needs to know for sure.

The doctor hesitates. “I can, but it’s expensive, and really rather unnecessary for most women…”

“Do it,” Beth says. Money be damned, she needs to be sure.

“I really don’t know, Ms. Harmon…”

“Please,” she says, and she hates that she can hear herself pleading. She’ll do anything to get this test. “I’m not married,” she says quietly, hoping that she’ll appeal to the doctor’s polite sensibilities, and he’ll take pity on her.

He looks at her disapprovingly. “Alright, let me get a nurse in here.”

The nurse arrives shortly with the test and instructs Beth how to use it. She goes to the bathroom and pees in the cup, feeling as though she’s in a dream. This _can’t_ be happening to her. It simply can’t.

_It’s okay, you’re just being cautious. It’s probably some bug you got in the Soviet Union._

She walks back to the examination room and hands her cup back to the nurse and the doctor comes back.

“We’ll send this off to the lab and we should have the results in about two weeks. We’ll give you a call.”

_Two weeks! How am I going to wait two weeks?_

“Is there anything else I can do for you today, Ms. Harmon?”

She sits and thinks. “Can I please have a prescription for tranquilizers?”

-

The next two weeks are agony. She spends most of it knocked out by the tranquilizers, not even needing booze to help pass out.

She tries to study, to play chess, but she can’t concentrate, simply ends up staring at the phone. She feels ill most of the time and continues to vomit daily.

She jumps every time it rings, but it seems it’s never the doctor. Jolene calls and she thinks about telling her, but she decides that there’s no use in telling anyone until she’s sure.

Yes, she’s been vomiting, and she’s been eating more, and her breasts are sore, and she’s realized she’s skipped her period, and she’s been achy, but surely there must be another explanation for this. She refuses to think about what she’ll do if she’s wrong. She won’t be wrong.

She doesn’t think she’s ever felt more alone.

Finally, fifteen days after she visits the doctor, the phone rings and it’s the doctor’s office, with the too-sweet receptionist telling her to hold for Dr. Smith, please.

“Ms. Harmon?”

“Yes?” Her skin is a live-wire, even through the haze of the tranquilizers.

“Your pregnancy test came back. It’s positive. Congratulations.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all of you who read this for Beth/Benny (because let's be real, that what I read most fics for on this tag half the time lol), I promise there will be more of them in the next chapter!
> 
> Also, I tried to make this as historically accurate as possible (I literally didn't know until this fic that home pregnancy tests weren't available in the US until the 1970s)


	2. Benny

Benny gets a call from Beth just before he leaves for Atlanta. He’s been debating calling her and following up on whether she really does want him to stop by Kentucky on his way back, but he’d dithered on the decision so far. Perhaps she’d only said jokingly.

He knows he has to be careful with Beth. She is fragile, yes (and also so strong and so beautiful), but deep down, though he’ll never admit it to anyone, least of all, Beth, he’s even more fragile when it comes to matters of the heart. He’s had a lot of time to think about this over the past couple months. He remembers his unanswered _I miss you_ after Paris. He can’t, _won’t,_ put himself out there again like that. The call to Moscow had been his peace offering after his _Don’t call me anymore,_ but he still didn’t know where that left them, even after she’d called him after Moscow. Were they friends? Friends who had sex? Something more?

He thinks Beth would scare like an animal in a fur trap at the words _something more_ , so he tries not to think about it too much. Hell, he’s not sure if he’s scared of _something more._

He knows she feels alone. And even though they understand each other, there’s always that distance of hers. He would know it, he’s carefully cultivated it around his own persona and with lovers before. If he’s being honest, he still keeps his, even with Beth. Old habits die hard and he’s not even quite sure he wants to break down this wall. 

Still, he’s relieved when he picks up the phone and Beth’s voice is on the other end of the line.

“Benny?”

“No, it’s Morphy’s ghost,” he kids.

She gives a small, obviously faked laugh on the other end of the phone. “Are you still going to Atlanta?” she asks.

 _Well, she’s cutting straight to the point._ But that’s good. They were never much for small talk. “Yeah,” he says, “I leave tomorrow.”

“How long is the tournament?” she asks.

“Five days,”

There’s a long pause and Benny’s not sure if he’s supposed to say something. He thinks it’s Beth’s move, but he’s never sure with her.

Finally, she asks, “And do you have any plans for after?”

So here it is. _Does she want me to come Kentucky?_ He remembers suggesting it, and remembers how carefully he’d phrased it, how nonchalantly he’d tried to suggest it. He’d been pleasantly surprised when she’d been agreeable to it, but they haven’t talked since and he doesn’t know if she’s changed her mind. Still, she’s the one calling him and asking.

“Do you want me to have plans?”

Another long pause. “Well, if you haven’t already made other plans,” she says, seemingly cool as ever, “I wouldn’t mind you coming to Lexington.”

 _Wouldn’t mind? Or wants me to?_ He supposes it doesn’t matter too much either, since his answer won’t change. “Okay,”

“Okay,” she says, distant on the line already.

He goes to hang up, he has to pack, when he hears her voice again.

“Benny?”

“Yes?”

Another long, pregnant pause. “…see you in a few days.”

-

Benny drives down to the tournament in Atlanta and he wins, because of course he does. Without Beth Harmon there, there is no American with a prayer of beating him.

But the entire time, his mind is on what, _who,_ awaits him a few states over.

The twins, Matt and Mike, are at this tournament, surprisingly. He never really talked to them much before he’d had them over in his apartment, when he’d rallied the troops to help Beth during the adjournment. But they’re friendly and good-seeming fellows with a sense of humor (and Beth is fond of them), even if they’re not good enough at chess to make for interesting conversation, so he hustles them in a few rounds of speed chess and eats a few meals with them.

“So, what’s up with you and Harmon?” Mike asks, on the last night, after all the games are finished and they’re set to leave in the morning.

 _Good question,_ Benny thinks. “What do you mean, ‘what’s up’?”

“Is she your girl?” Mike clarifies.

He chews his food and thinks. He knows what they’re trying to get at, and doesn’t have an answer for it. So he evades. “Beth’s not a possession,” he says, frowning.

Matt pipes up. “Of course not,” he gives Mike a brotherly look of annoyance. “But are you two lovers?”

There’s that word for _something more_. Part of it is a sign of the times, Benny thinks, with any two people having sex with one another being called lovers. But there is something deeply intimate and romantic about the word too. Something he’s not quite sure describes him and Beth. But they weren’t just a quick fuck, either. At least, he hopes not.

“No,” he says, confident enough in that answer, even if he doesn’t like it. “I don’t think so,” he adds.

Matt and Mike nod. In the past few days, the boys have filled him in a little about Beth’s life since coming back from Moscow. He can’t say he doesn’t get a pang of jealousy when he hears they’ve been over, with Harry Beltik, of all people, to Beth’s house.

“Why? Does she talk about me?” he asks, a flutter going off in his stomach.

“She talks about you coaching her,” Matt says, carefully.

“I see,” Benny says.

“She does speak of you fondly, though,” he adds.

“We were just wondering,” Mike says, “since you got us all together in New York. Thought there might be something there.”

“We’re just friends,” Benny says. He doesn’t like this conversation. “I think.”

Matt and Mike give each other a look that Benny doesn’t even try to decipher. His mind is on other things.

There’s that _I think_ because he doesn’t _know_ and if it’s one thing Benny Watts hates, even hates more than losing, it’s not knowing. And he doesn’t know the answer to these questions because he and Beth haven’t _talked,_ not really talked, not since she got back to Moscow, not since they both left so many things unsaid and said too many things they can’t take back in the phone calls leading up to Moscow.

It suddenly occurs to him. Why is he sitting here in this restaurant with Matt and Mike of all people, talking about Beth Harmon, when what he really needs to be doing is talking _to_ Beth Harmon?

He checks out of the hotel early and drives through the night.

-

By the time he gets to Lexington, he’s down from the blood-pounding high he had when he’d hurriedly left the hotel. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, that he was going to rush here and bang on her door and demand they, what? _Talk?_

Beth is not one to demand things from and he doesn’t even know what they have to _talk_ about.

He stands in front of her house, the perfect suburban two-story. He’s not sure what he imagined when he pictured Beth’s house, but it wasn’t this. Still, it oddly fits her. Very different from his ratty New York apartment.

When he first knocks on the door, there’s no answer. He tries a few more times before determining no one’s home. Part of him wonders if she’s just inside, ignoring him. But he does see that the curtains are open, and there’s no lights on, so it’s more likely that she’s out. She wasn’t expecting him until night anyway. He goes back to his car, pulls his cowboy hat down over his head, and sleeps.

-

He’s awoken by a knock on his window. Groaning, he finds his hat slipped off while he was napping.

And then there’s Beth, wearing a loose but fashionable dress, knocking on his window as if she comes home every day to random men waiting for her in her driveway. _Who knows? Maybe she does._

Still, it’s good to see her, so he grins, grabs his hat and gets out of the car.

“You’re here early,” Beth remarks, taking him in.

“Hello to you too, Harmon.” He’s not sure if he’s supposed to shake her hand or hug her or kiss her, so he decides to wait on her opening move.

She looks down, seemingly having had her fill of Benny. “It’s good to see you, Benny,” she says in a sort of small, tentative voice.

He smiles at her then, a true genuine smile. “It’s good to see you too.”

She steps forward, arms coming up slightly, almost as if to hug him, but then seems to think better of it. Benny’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed.

“How’d the tournament go?” she asks.

And with that, they shift back to familiar ground, to a world of 64 squares that they are both so at-home with.

He tells her about the tournament, describes his winning game. Beth listens with interest, smiling when he goes off on a tangent about a strategy taken from a footnote. Beth counters with a move Benny didn’t forsee, and they argue about it, setting it up in their heads, until Benny finally has to admit she’s right.

It’s only when it starts to get dark that they realize they’ve been standing outside by Benny’s car for almost two hours.

Beth clears her throat, “Do you want to put your things inside?”

Benny nods. He doesn’t have much stuff, but he welcomes the invitation all the same. He grabs his stuff from the trunk and follows Beth up the pathway to the house.

Beth unlocks the door and goes about turning on the lights.

Benny follows her inside and takes in the living room, with the plush greenish-blue couch and the coffee table stacked with issues of _Chess Review_ and some more recently published chess books and littered with some beer bottles. Again, he’s struck by the feeling that this home isn’t where he pictured Beth living, yet it still feels very Beth at the same time. He’s not sure what to do, so he dawdles in the hallway.

Beth, for her part, goes about straightening things here and there in the kitchen. “You can put your stuff wherever,” she calls out. She’s opened up the fridge and frowns at the contents. “I don’t have much in the way of groceries,” she says. “Want to go to the diner for dinner?”

Benny drops his bag in the hallway, idling wondering about sleeping arrangements. Beth mentioned once that she had a guest room, but he doesn’t know where he’s expected to sleep. He wouldn’t be half-surprised if Beth pulled out an inflatable mattress, just to spite him. He supposes they’ll figure that out later.

“Sure, that sounds good.”

-

They walk to the diner, which isn’t that far from Beth’s house despite the suburban sprawl she lives in. Benny’s hat and duster garner quite a few looks, but he’s grown used to that by now. He has much bigger things on his mind.

Their conversation on the way is polite, if a little stifled and awkward. It’s like they’ve just sat down to a chess board before a match, both trying to size up the other before they get to playing, trying to guess the other’s opening. Ironically, the most comfortable when they get is when the conversation veers into chess and tournaments and tactics.

But he notices something is different about Beth. He’s not sure whether it’s just the awkwardness between them, the _not talking_ talking that they’re doing or something else, but there’s something on her mind that he can’t quite puzzle out. So, he says nothing about it.

The diner is well-lit with bright fluorescent lights and sticky plastic booths. Benny arches an eyebrow when Beth orders a beer, but doesn’t say anything and orders one himself.

Beth immediately takes a large swig when they arrive. So she hasn’t quite kicked the alcohol, yet.

He wants to lecture her, scream at her, tell her she’s wasting her talent, that she might have beaten Borgov once but she can still end up washed up at 21. But they also haven’t seen each other for months, and he knows it won’t do any good, so he refrains. Just barely, but he refrains. Benny picks up the menu. “So, what’s good at this place?”

She doesn’t answer, just stares down the mouth of her beer bottle. Something is definitely off. Is it because he hasn’t called more? Because _he_ called _her_ in Moscow, and she’d seem interested in him visiting but then she hadn’t called him for _weeks_ and goddamn it, Beth can use her fucking words like a-

“I’m pregnant.”

Benny thinks his world might tip off its axis a little. He hears the words but he also thinks that maybe the lack of sleep is making him hear things. _Pregnant?_

He looks at Beth, who sits there, mouth open, almost like she didn’t mean for the words to come out. He’s sure his mouth is gaping too.

Beth reaches for her beer bottle, but Benny, quick as ever, grabs it. “ _What?”_

She quickly disentangles their hands and makes for the bottle, taking another swig and finishing it off. She signals to the waitress for another.

“I’m pregnant, Benny,” she says, firmly.

He slumps back against the seat. Despite his casual posture, he is anything but relaxed. His mind races and he, who is Benny Watts, who is usually so calm and collected and cool, can’t seem to get a hold of anything, his breathing coming short, his mind racing.

_Pregnant? Beth is pregnant? When did this happen? We haven’t had sex in three months…oh. Goddamn. But we always used condoms. How did this happen? Is it mine? It can’t be mine?_ The thoughts make him sick. _But then why would she be telling me this? What the fuck? Pregnant, as in having a kid, having another human? When was the last time I even saw a baby?_

He’s not sure how long he’s been in his thought spiral, but he’s brought out of it by the waitress who is clearing her throat, asking for his order. He rattles off the first diner food item he can think of, food the last thing on his mind.

It is not for Beth, who has been inquisitively staring at him, and who now has three beer bottles in front of her. “I’ll have a hamburger, with two sides of fries and extra pickles,” she says. The waitress picks up their menus and goes to place their order.

Neither has said anything to each other since Beth dropped her bombshell.

“Is it mine?” His voice comes out rougher than he wants, demanding and anxious.

Beth looks vaguely affronted, and for a moment, it looks like she’s going to slap him.

Instead, she rolls her eyes. “Yes, Benny, it’s yours.” She reaches for her beer.

The tension in his chest doesn’t ease, but there’s a little less pounding in his head. Just a little. “How?”

Beth arches her brow in an _Are you serious?_ gesture.

“I mean, I know _how,_ ” he starts. “But we always used condoms—”

Beth shakes her head. “Not always.” She takes another sip of her beer, having at least slowed down. “The night before I left for Paris,” she says.

Benny draws in a breath. He remembers now. They had fucked early in the morning that day and had used the last of Benny’s condom stash. He hadn’t bothered to go out and get more, since he figured Beth would want a good night’s sleep before Paris. That turned out not to be the case.

_Fuck._

Well, that’s how they got here.

“How long have you known?” Benny asks. _Did she know in Moscow?_

“Not long, about two weeks. I suspected a few weeks ago.”

“Oh,” he says, because he can’t _think,_ he doesn’t _know_ what else to say. He wanted to talk, but he doesn’t even know where to start to _talk_ about this. So he waits for Beth.

Beth, for her part, doesn’t seem to have much more to say. _What is there to say?_ The waitress drops off their food, and they eat silently.

This is not how he expected the visit to go

The waitress comes back, clears their plates and brings coffee. Beth lights a cigarette.

“So…you’re pregnant,” Benny says.

“I am,” Beth says. She is impossibly strong, impossibly cool and collected for such a conversation.

“And this…baby,” he says, the words foreign on his tongue, “is due in five months?”

Beth doesn’t look at him, glancing to the side, to the door, seemingly anywhere but his eyes. “Yes,” she says, “it would be.”

“Would be?” Now he’s confused. Why is she talking like that?

“Benny, I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says, “or going to do.”

She said those exact words to him three months ago, right after she’d lost to Borgov in Paris. And then she hadn’t come back to New York, had come back here and gotten drunk and high and who knows what else. Something had ripped at his chest then, and it rips at his chest now. It’s not the words themselves, or even what she’d done after, but it’s the fact that she says them with such a loneliness in her voice, like it’s a foregone fact that she’s going to be _alone._

And then it dawns on him that current custom demand that he propose to her, that he marry her, that they marry quickly and quietly and pretend to have a premature baby, and that he get a 9-5 job to support a _family,_ and this is all too much—they haven’t even talked more than a handful of times in the past few months and he doesn’t even know what they are and he came here to find out and this is what he gets?—and he thinks he’s going to be sick, right there in the diner.

That would be awful, just like this entire situation, and how did he get here? He’s Benny Watts and his life consists of 64 squares on a chess board and winning and poker, and sometimes pretty girls, but not babies and a family and a steady job. And his baser, survival instincts, the ones that made him a chess champion at the age of nine, are telling him to _run._

But Beth has even stronger instincts than him. She gets up, lays a few dollars on the table, and looks at him square in the eyes. “This was a mistake,” she says, quietly.

And then she walks out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm not really sure how I feel about this chapter, but I'm trying to keep Benny more in character (and let's face it, he is a bit of an asshole) and we all know that both of them have iSsUeS lol


	3. Beth

Beth is _furious_.

She’d finally told Benny and _this_ is how he reacted?

First he’d questioned whether it was his (as if she would be telling him if it wasn’t), and then he’d just sat there in stunned silence. Benny Watts _always_ has something to say.

 _But what did you expect?_ She asks herself. _You barely know how to deal with it and you’ve known for certain for a week now._

Telling Benny had been a disaster. She hadn’t necessarily meant to tell him, she didn’t even know if she was going to tell him until the words came out. They hadn’t even seen in each other in months, and not that she has much experience with this at all, but she doesn’t think this is the kind of thing you just drop on someone, especially when you don’t even know where you stand with that person. She’d debated telling him the whole week, and wasn’t even sure when she stepped foot in the diner. In the end, she’d just blurted it out. So, at least she didn’t go in with expectations.

Still, she finds she’s oddly disappointed at his reaction, or lack of reaction. She’s not sure exactly what she wanted, she certainly didn’t expect—or want—him to fall on his knees and ask her to marry him in the middle of the diner, but she’s not happy.

Then again, she supposes she hadn’t given much indication of what she wanted either. She’d tried to be strong for the conversation, knew she had to be, because if she wasn’t, if she let on how afraid she was, she would start crying and wouldn’t stop for a long time.

And she is absolutely _terrified._ More terrified than when she faced Borgov, even. She didn’t think she’d ever be that terrified again.

It’s not that she’s pregnant. It’s not that she’s pregnant and unmarried. It’s not that she’s unsure of where she stands with the father. It’s not that

It’s that she feels, incredibly, impossibly _alone_ in this situation.

She retches in the bushes twice on the way home.

-

She takes a long bath at home, not bothering to listen to the doorbell. Briefly, bitterly, she wonders if she’s becoming her mother, her biological mother.

She thinks about her biological mother, who went mad from her genius, who pushed her biological father (at least she thinks that man outside the trailer was her biological father) away, who felt so alone in this world that she killed herself, who left Beth alone in this world.

She thinks of her biological father who wanted her at one point, but then pushed her away, making her mother feel so alone, she killed herself, leaving Beth alone in the world. 

And then she thinks of Alma Wheatley, who adopted her because _she_ was so lonely. Alma, who started drinking herself to death because of loneliness, and couldn’t stop even when Beth was there.

She thinks of Alston Wheatley, who left when his wife was at her lowest, who couldn’t ( _wouldn’t)_ deal with a melancholy, drunk for a wife, even though he’d made her that way. Who had only agreed to adopt to shut his wife up.

She wonders if children are just a way for lonely adults to try to fix their problems. The movies and the home economics classes in school say that a baby fixes most things. But really, Beth wonders, do they fix anything? In her experience, they seem to ( _she_ , seems to) cause more trouble than they’re worth. 

Even knowing this, she can’t help but wonder what having a baby would feel like. A child, a whole person who’s not really their own person, who depends on you for everything, who is almost always with you, at least in the early years. A child is someone who can’t really leave. A child who _has_ to trust you.

 _Maybe a child does help. That way you have someone to live for other than yourself. But,_ Beth thinks, _I barely know how to live for myself._

-

There’s a loud knock on the door around 2 a.m.

Beth lies in bed for a few minutes, knowing it’s probably Benny and wondering if she should answer it.

Finally, she decides to answer it. Might as well rip the band-aid off now.

Beth pulls on a robe, one of Alma’s old robes that Beth still keeps, and slips down the stairs. Benny’s duffel is still in the hall, the dusty brown leather out of place in the cozy suburban home. She picks it up from the floor and heaves it over her shoulder. Better to make this quick.

She opens the door, and yes, there is Benny. He’s not drunk or high, like some other guys his age who just received the same news might be, but he’s there, hat in hand, looking warily at her with a crease in his forehead that Beth swears is going to be indented there soon.

And because she’s had enough pain for one night, she drops the duffel at his feet and closes the door.

She’s not surprised to hear Benny’s huff or the rapid knocking on the door, but she has to steel herself just the same.

She is tired of people leaving, of being left, and if she has to be alone, she might as well (pretend to) choose it.

“Beth,” Benny says through the door, his voice soft and pleading. “Open up.”

She shakes her head, even though she knows he can’t see him.

She leans her head back against the door, wanting this all to be over with.

“Benny, just go.”

“Can we just talk Beth?”

So _now_ he wants to talk?

“There really isn’t anything to talk about,” she says to the door. Maybe she’s more like her father (what she can remember of him, at least), than she thinks.

“How can you—” She hears a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the door, and a curse. “Just, this is a lot and I’m, I’m sorry I didn’t say more at the diner, but this is a lot.”

Beth doesn’t think she’s ever heard Benny Watts repeat things unnecessarily, or what’s more, _apologize._ And maybe because she hears the desperation in her voice, or because she really doesn’t want to deal with the aching feeling in her chest, or because she’s tried so hard not to be her biological mother all her life, she turns around and opens the door.

She stands in the doorway again, not moving, unsure if she’s going to demand they talk here, in the doorway, or if she’ll let him in. She’s trying to plot both pathways and their moves ahead, but it’s not coming together. Some things, you just can’t plan for, can’t envision on the ceiling.

Finally, she decides to let him in and steps to the side, jerking her head toward the living room.

He comes in cautiously, aware that he’s on very thin ice. He hovers in the archway between the hall and the living room. Beth breezes past him into the kitchen and pours herself a glass of whiskey, which she swallows in one gulp. She pours another and motions to the bottle.

Benny shakes his head. “No, thank you.” He sits down on the plush velvet couch. She’s expecting a frown from him, a judgement, and she’s ready to tell him off, the words on the tip of her tongue, but his face is purposively, concentratedly, _(infuriatingly, she thinks),_ blank.

She goes to sit opposite him, in the armchair she’s so fond of. She leans forward, putting all the tension in her shoulders.

“So,” she starts, “you wanted to talk.”

He nods.

“So talk.” She is too tired, too scared, too annoyed right now to do anything but listen.

Benny scratches his head and fidgets. Benny Watts never fidgets, but he’s fidgeting now. _This must really be getting to him,_ Beth remarks to herself. She notices how his silky blonde hair runs through his fingers.

“You’re pregnant,” Benny starts, stating the most obvious.

She nods.

“You’re about three months pregnant,”

Another nod. _Why is he being like this?_

“And you found out a week ago.”

This time, she speaks. “Yes. I suspected about three weeks, when some people made some comments to me and I realized my symptoms matched up. I thought it was just a bug from Moscow or something, maybe withdrawal effects—I had quit Librium, in case you care—but then I went to the doctor’s and got a test, and they confirmed it.” She states the facts almost as if she’s simply analyzing a chess game. Ever since she got it confirmed, she’s been trying to think of it abstractly, almost as if it were happening to someone else, and thinking of it all as a game, with a clear sequence, helps.

But she knows it is not a game.

Benny, sharp as ever, notices the past tense. “Had?”

 _Not now,_ she thinks. The past three weeks had been tough, and plenty of women all over took Librium, if just to _deal_ with the every day shitshow of life they’d been handed. She pointedly ignores the comment, just continues to look at him.

He continues. “You said you don’t know what you’re going to do,” he says.

Beth looks down at her hands, away from Benny’s piercing eyes. “I did.”

Benny’s eyes don’t leave her, even as she glances around the room, from Alma’s piano to the desk with her checkbook in it, to the stairs where she desperately wants to run to.

“What did you mean?” Benny asks. He is looking at her and asking her a straight-forward question, asking for a straight-forward answer. It occurs to her that she’s not sure they’ve ever had such a conversation, where at least one (if not both) of them didn’t have some ulterior motive or it didn’t feel like they were playing some verbal game of chess.

At any other moment, she’d take this moment and ponder it, replay it, dissect it, analyze it, trying to find Benny’s angle. And she doesn’t entirely shake the feeling that Benny has some ulterior motive, something she can’t see, something she’s not thinking about hard enough to see, but she is too tired, too emotionally worn out, to think about it for too long.

“I mean, I don’t know what I’m going to do Benny. It’s really as simple as that,” she says. “As you probably guessed, my plan was not to get pregnant—unmarried at that—at 20, right after the biggest win of my career.”

He continues staring at her. “Look, Benny, this isn’t your problem, I don’t know why I told you. Just forget about it. I’ll figure it out.” And because, even though she’s aching inside (has been aching for a long time), she knows that there’s an ache out there even worse than loneliness, and because she is smart and knows what society says and knows what Benny must have thought about in the dinner and that is _pity_ , and there is nothing she hates more, she says, “You don’t have to stay.”

Benny stands up then, and Beth braces herself to watch him head out the door. But he doesn’t.

“Why do you always think you have to do things by yourself?” He’s looking down at her now, his voice increasing. “Didn’t you learn that from Moscow? Yeah, I said don’t call anymore, but _I called._ ” He says, softer, “I called. I came here.” 

She looks at him, a million different replies warring behind her eyes. Yet, she sits silently.

Benny starts pacing.

“This wasn’t what I was expecting when I came here. I drove all night to come here to talk to you, to talk about Moscow, to talk about what the fuck we are, to stop dancing around shit, stop chasing the queen across the board. And then you drop this on me? It’s a fucking lot. When you left the diner, I sat there for a good two hours, just trying to wrap my mind around it, but it’s harder than seeing forty moves ahead. I mean, Christ—a baby’s a big deal. But I’m still _here._ I’m here right now. Give me some credit, Harmon.”

 _Everyone’s “here now_ ,” _at some point,_ she thinks. _There’s always a later. A later when they’re not here._

But he does have a point. He _is_ here, for now, at least. And maybe that’s something.

She’s always ready for someone to leave, to get left. But she’s also an orphan and she also knows to grab onto what she can, when she can, like the fistful of pills she grabbed when she broke into the medicine room.

And maybe it’s the whiskey or maybe it’s something else, or maybe it’s Benny, but she doesn’t want to think about this anymore. At least, not tonight.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?” Benny asks, raising his eyebrow at her.

“Okay.” She gets up. “You’re here.” She makes her way to the staircase, and pauses at the landing, motioning upstairs.

“Are you coming?”

She can tell an argument is on his lips. A demand that they stay there and talk this out, figure this out. He stands there for a moment, looking torn. Then, for the second time in his life (the first being in the diner, she decides), Benny Watts keeps quiet.

He follows.

-

Beth wakes up before Benny does. She wakes up and her head is on Benny’s naked chest. She’s confused for just a moment, and then she remembers how she’d coaxed Benny upstairs, wanting to make the most of him being here, right now, whatever lay in the future. She’d been intent on seducing him (if only to get him to stop talking and making promises he couldn’t keep), and had succeeded in getting his shirt off, but when she’d pushed him back on the bed and crawled on top of him, she must have passed out. She sees Benny still in his jeans, his arms and body in an awkward position. He must not have wanted to wake her, so he slept like that.

She’s not sure if it’s sickening sweetness of the gesture, or just morning sickness, but she finds herself running to the toilet, hurling up what she ate at the diner last night. 

She hates this. After she brushes her teeth to get the aftertaste out, she sits on the bathroom floor, staring at the wallpaper she couldn’t bear to replace after Alma had died. It’s not really her style, but it is decidedly Alma’s. Like the rest of the house before she redecorated, it screams 60s housewife trying to stay in fashion.

Beth remembers Alma saying she had a child once. They’d never talked about it after, and sometimes, Beth still wonders. She can’t say for certain, but she’s almost sure Alma’s child died when it was young. She wonders if that’s part of what drove her to drink, to the pills, to the miserable and stuck existence she led. Other times, she thinks of Alma’s unconventional mothering style (at least to her), and wonders if a baby wouldn’t have just drove her further to the brink.

She hears some rustling in the bedroom, and even though she’s done in the bathroom, she stays in there, not wanting to face whatever conversation Benny is going to make them have (since it’s clear from last night, he still has a lot to say). Maybe she’s a coward, maybe she’s hiding, adding a few more futile moves in the game, but she doesn’t think she can deal right now. (“ _Maybe is a loser’s word,_ ” he’d once said to her. Perhaps he’s right, but she can’t think of anything but _maybes_ right now, and she already feels like a loser in some many aspects).

After a bit, she hears the bedroom door shut and footsteps on the stairs. She reaches to the counter and grabs a Librium out of the almost empty bottle and swallows it while she braces for the sound of the front door and the tell-tale sign of a car engine.

When she hears it, she’s almost relieved. She gets up, splashes some water on her face. She feels a knot growing in her stomach but she ignores it and goes into her room to get dressed. Hopefully the Librium will refurbish her tranquility (if she ever had any).

She picks out a loose-fitting but chic green dress and puts the radio on high while she gets ready.

-

She heads downstairs and the first thing she sees is Benny’s scuffed duffel bag right where it was last night, against the wall in the hallway. _Why is it still here?_

She inches around the corner cautiously, suddenly skittish in her own house.

And there is Benny, in her house, at her kitchen, at her _stove_ , of all things. He’s fussing about with a pan, and it’s all Beth can do to not stand and gape.

She’s pretty sure she does, anyway.

He doesn’t notice her at first, and Beth takes the opportunity to study him, as if they’re just sitting down to a match and he’s white and she’s black and she’s trying to figure out what his opening will be just from his demeanor.

He’s fussing around with something in a pan. Eggs, her nose tells her. He’s wearing one of his typical all-black get ups, but his cowboy hat and duster aren’t around. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, and she can’t help but regret she didn’t get to seduce him last night. He’s concentrating hard on the pan, his brow focused. She’s never seen him focused on anything except chess and getting into people’s heads.

It’s unsettling to see Benny Watts , chess grandmaster, in her kitchen, cooking eggs. _Of course,_ she thinks, _he made himself right at home, didn’t even ask if he could use anything._ Though, she supposes she did something similar when she was in his apartment.

She clears her throat, “I thought you’d left.”

He stops then, freezes for a second, and turns to her. He’s not smiling, but he’s not frowning either, just looking at her with pensive eyes.

“I did. I went to the grocery store,” he says. She nods, somewhat surprised.

“You only had beer in the fridge,” he continues.

She ignores that and goes to open the fridge, which is now at least partially-stocked.

If she were alone, she’d probably pour herself a beer or a glass of wine, but she doesn’t really feel like a lecture from Benny. She settles for milk instead. She wonders if she still has some vodka upstairs.

She seats herself at the counter, sipping her milk quietly. Benny returns to the eggs. It’s nothing fancy, just some scrambled eggs, but he’s focusing hard on them. When they’re finished, he grabs two plates out of her cabinet ( _of course, he rooted around in my cabinets too,_ Beth thinks), and fixes them both a plate, sliding one over to Beth. He remains standing at the counter, across from her.

“Thanks,” she says.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

They eat in silence once again, letting the gulf between them grow.

When they’re finished, Benny starts to clean up. Once again, Beth is unsettled.

“When are you leaving?” she blurts out.

Benny’s shoulders tense at the sink. He turns to her. “Do you want me to leave?” He asks, softly.

And suddenly, it’s too hot and stuffy in the kitchen, with the stove still cooling and his gaze on her.

She hurriedly (and maybe a bit clumsily) gets off the counter stool. “I’m going to get some air,” she announces.

-

Beth ends up walking to Bradley’s and purchasing a pack of cigarettes and she chainsmokes three before she feels her nerves somewhat settling.

She remembers when she was in here with Jolene, who had called her a cocksucker, and then asked if she were pregnant the next day.

She hasn’t told Jolene yet. When she’d told Benny, that was the first time she’d said it out loud, even to herself. It all suddenly feels more real. Like she can’t miraculously wish it away. And she guesses she can’t.

But now, now that it’s out there, it feels _wrong_ not to tell Jolene.

She gets quarters from Bradley’s and finds a payphone.

The phone rings three times, and Beth contemplates hanging up and simply running away from the payphone, from the house, from Lexington altogether, six times. 

Finally, Jolene answers.

“Hello? Jolene here.” It’s Jolene’s professional voice, like she might be expecting a work call or a call from a law school.

But it’s just Beth. “It’s Beth.”

“Cocksucker! I’ve been busy but I’ve been meaning to call you. I want to get down there again sometime soon.”

“That’d be nice,” Beth starts. Her voice wobbles a bit, she thinks, but maybe it’s just in her head. Or from the whiskey nip she’d bought at Bradley’s and quickly downed.

“You okay, Beth?” Jolene asks. “Why are you calling?”

Beth decides to just get it over with. “You were right. I’m pregnant.”

Silence. The silence stretches over the line, and Beth almost things that Jolene must have hung up, or they’ve been disconnected.

“I see,” Jolene’s rich voice comes through. More silence. “When did you find out?”

Beth puts more quarters in the machine. “A week ago.” She twirls the cord around her finger. “I went to the doctor the week after you visited and made him do a test, to be sure.”

She hears Jolene suck in a gasp. “So it’s real then?”

She closes her eyes and rests her head on the glass. “As real as it gets, I guess.”

“Is it that chess cowboy’s from New York?”

Beth hesitates, because although she knows it is, she doesn’t know where she and Benny stand, and she thinks, maybe all of this would be at least a tiny bit easier if she just dealt with it alone.

But it’s never been any use to try to hide things from Jolene. “Yes,” she says simply. She doesn’t add that he’s here now (or was, at least, when she left. Who knows, maybe he’s already packed his beetle and headed back to New York by now). This is all complicated enough already.

“What are you going to do?” Jolene asks.

Beth feels small again, like she’s standing on the bridge after her mother crashed the car, not really knowing what’s going on or where she’ll go. She has the urge to flee again.

“I don’t know.”

Another sucked in breath. “I see.” Slowly, she adds, “Have you thought about options?”

“What do you mean, options?” Right now, she feels cornered, like it’s all gone and she’s just pushing wood on a board, no chance to get out of the inevitable checkmate.

“Options. You’ve got options, choices, Cracker.”

Beth remains silent, not seeing the move. God, she wants another drink.

“There are things you can get done to get out of this,” Jolene says. “Only if you want.”

 _Abortion._ Jolene is talking about abortion. Beth might be naïve about certain parts of life, but she’s heard enough whispers in hotel bars and the like to know what abortion is. But truthfully, while she knows what it is, she hasn’t the faintest idea where one gets one, or how, or who. Abortion isn’t a dinner table conversation.

“What do you want, Cracker?” Jolene’s voice is soft, tender, and though Beth loves Jolene, she finds she can’t handle the gentleness in her voice. It’s unsettling, unsettling in the way seeing Benny cook in her kitchen was.

“I don’t know,” she repeats.

“How far along are you?”

Beth sighs. “About three months,” she says. “I think.” At least, according to her best educated guess.

“Well,” Jolene says. “You still have time. Not a lot, but a little. To decide what to do.”

Beth nods, even though Jolene can’t see her. She swallows thickly. _Options._ “I guess I have a lot of thinking to do.”

“That’s what you’ve always been best at, Cracker.”

-

Beth’s not sure what she feels when she walks up her street and still sees Benny’s Volkswagen parked in front of her house.

She opens the door and the duffle bag is still in the hallway.

Benny, who has made himself right at home, is sitting in the living room chair, reading a copy of the newest _Chess Review._ Probably rereading it, Beth thinks to herself.

She slips off her shoes and goes to sit on the couch.

“You’re still here,” she says, stating the obvious.

Benny looks at her intently, _Chess Review_ lowered to his lap.

“I am,” he says cautiously.

“I have a lot to think about,” she announces.

Benny nods, his face uncertain.

Beth looks down at her hands, folded together tightly. “And I don’t want you to,” she mumbles.

“What?”

She looks to the side, to the kitchen, which is now all cleaned up. “I don’t want you to,” she says a bit more clearly.

“Don’t want me to what?” Benny asks, the tone in his voice suggesting genuine confusion. Well, she supposes she’s seen a lot of firsts with Benny Watts in the past 24 hours.

She forces herself to look at him then, just for a second, while she says. “Leave.” She looks away again. “I don’t want you to leave.”

She doesn’t see Benny’s face completely, but it does something strange, but since she’s only looking out of the corner of her eye, she can’t tell completely.

But she can tell he nods. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm really enjoying all your comments so I'd love to know what you think about this chapter!


	4. Benny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it's taken so long to update this. I had to get in the right headspace to write these next few chapters, even though I've known where I'm taking the story from the beginning!
> 
> I hope you enjoy the update

They continue this routine for a few days.

To say that Benny is frustrated is an understatement. He came here to talk and they are decidedly _not talking._ Of course, he hadn’t anticipated that first conversation in the diner.

And, sure, they talk about what to have for dinner, or Beth will tell him she’s going out for a walk and to give the kid who mows the lawn the money she’s left on the table, but they don’t talk. Not about anything important.

But they do play chess, and that’s always been as close to actual understanding as they’ve ever gotten, so maybe that’s something.

Part of him feels like it’s a test. Like she’s testing to see if he’ll stick around. He doesn’t know what she’s going to do. Hell, he doesn’t even really know what he’s going to do. But he’s here now, and that has to count for something. Right?

-

Beth doesn’t ask about where he was in those hours between when she left the diner and he showed back up at her door.

In some ways, he thinks she probably doesn’t care. He could have been out sleeping with half the town, and she probably wouldn’t care. Normally, he doesn’t care who his lovers are sleeping with either. He hates that he cares this time. 

What he really was doing was making inquiries around town to the locals, seeing what gambling opportunities there were. It’d usually be hard to find, but it turns out the owner of the diner has a nasty little habit of cards, and that suited Benny just fine.

Benny doesn’t like to think of himself as an addict. He’s not addicted to any substance that will make him throw up or shake if it doesn’t get it. But there’s something undeniable to him about the lure of cards, of a bet, of chance.

That’s why he likes speed chess so much. It’s not about who’s the best, it’s about who can think the fastest, who can outsmart the others, who can outwit.

Maybe it’s not an addiction to gambling, per se. Maybe it’s an addiction to ego.

-

Benny finds her one day, passed out in bed with at least nine beer bottles around her.

He thinks his heart stops, at least for a moment. “Goddamn it, Beth,” he mutters under his breath as he furiously tries to shake her awake

She wakes fairly easily, though bleary-eyed.

“What the fuck, Benny?” she asks, annoyed and goes to turn over to go back to sleep.

“Don’t what the fuck me, what the fuck are you doing?!” he yells.

She just continues to turn over, acting as though she didn’t hear him. But he knows she does.

“Don’t _ignore_ me, Beth,” he hisses. He is _tired_ of being ignored.

She sits up suddenly, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re not my father,” she grumbles at him. “So stop acting like it.”

He doesn’t miss the irony in the statement. He thinks about retorting something like _but you want me to be a father? When you obviously can’t even get your own act together?_ But he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “No, I’m not.”

“If you don’t like it, just go then, Benny,” she says, staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes are glassy. “This is my house.”

He retreats downstairs, but doesn’t leave.

-

Her words echo in his mind. _You’re not my father._ But who was? Who was her father?

They’ve never really talked about her parents.

Benny knows she was orphaned at a young age and then went to that girls’ orphanage, where she learned to play chess. That much had been in all the magazines that did silly puff pieces on her, absolutely ignoring just how brilliant she was at chess and only focusing on her sex.

He knows that a woman, her adoptive mother, accompanied her to all her tournaments before her untimely death in Mexico, after Beth’s game with Borgov.

He knows that she always wears a gold watch that her mother gave her, it as ever present on her as the silver chains on his neck.

He doesn’t know much more than that.

 _What must it be like, to grow up like that?_ he thinks. _To learn chess like that? Without any family?_ (And now to be pregnant.)

He thinks back to his own childhood. Of course, they’ve never talked about his own parents.

He’d grown up in a fairly normal household, he supposes. His father and mother were together. They seemed to get on, maybe even loved each other. He supposes he wasn’t too observant of that stuff when he was a kid. He was an only child. They lived in a New Hampshire suburb. They went to church on Sundays, prayed at the dinner table each night. They sent him to private school, where he had to wear a uniform every day and they weren’t allowed to wear hats inside (he’ll admit that it gives him satisfaction every time he strides into a hotel lobby like he owns it, cowboy hat tipped on his head).

Early on, his father had tried to get him into baseball, the great all-American pastime. But Benny had never been interested in that, preferring to stay in and make games up in his head. His father grumbled that he would never be a man, would never be able to take care of himself if he insisted on being such a ninny, if he didn’t learn sports, if he didn’t rough and tumble with the neighborhood boys.

His mother had always been more indulgent, but it was always clear to Benny that she didn’t really get him either.

When he was six, his aunt came to visit and gifted him a chess set and that had been it. He’d shown his talent almost immediately and his aunt insisted on taking him to the local chess tournament, where he’d defeated the beginner players in minutes and quickly advanced to the top of the whole tournament.

His father hadn’t been happy, but at least his son was good for something. His mother was happy that there was peace in the household once more.

His father had lightened up a little when he saw that chess could actually bring in some money, but Benny always preferred to play for the glory of it, never really looking at the prize money. Still, Benny always knew that his father would have preferred he’d proved to be a genius at football or baseball, or hell, even golf (if one can even be a genius at those things). As it was, his father always snorted a little at his all black wardrobe, told him it made him look like a “punk up to no good.”

He still remembers all the games from his childhood, before he could travel alone, or when his aunt wasn’t able to take him. His mother would sit, chaperoning him as he tore through European grandmasters and US Champions alike. She’d smile politely at him at the end of each game, whether he won or lost. On the rare occasions his father joined along, when he couldn’t think up of an excuse to get out of it, his father would never clap, just sit there with a stony expression on his face.

It hadn’t been a bad childhood, he supposes. He’d had his genius recognized and he’d been given the opportunity to cultivate it.

With the money he’d saved up from tournaments over the years, he’d moved out the day he was 18, bought his first cowboy hat and trench coat, and moved to New York City.

But every so often, he thinks of his father’s disapproving stare or his mother’s weary “really, more chess?” and he can’t help but feel a tiny pang in his gut.

-

_How would they even raise a kid?_ The thought has echoed through his mind endlessly the past few days.

He’s never been a white picket fence guy, never wanted to settle down. He’d had too much of that in his youth and he revels in the New York City counterculture, full of free love hippies and tortured writers waxing poetic about the chains of modern American life.

But some moments, a lifetime flashes before him. Beth having the baby. Him at her side. Her suburban house in Kentucky. A kid with red hair and a too-lanky frame. Teaching them chess. Jeez, the kid would probably come out of the womb playing chess. Taking the kid along to tournaments. The kid starting a freaking chess club at their school and bragging about their legendary chess player parents. Him, Beth, and the kid playing chess at night after dinner, before bedtime. Him and Beth together.

But then he also pictures Beth in her bed, turned away, a baby crying in the crib next to her. The dangers of childbirth (not that he knows much about it, but he’s heard things). Wailing throughout the night. Being stuck in Kentucky for weeks, months, even (can you travel with an infant? He doesn’t think so). Baby bottles and beer bottles littering a counter. The hardness of his concrete floor and the softness of a baby’s head. His poker games where he can lose $200, $300, $400 a night (he bets baby stuff is expensive). Having to talk to a kid (about something other than chess). What does one talk to children about?

The images war in his mind, a daydream and a nightmare (even though he’s smart enough to know that somewhere in the middle lies reality).

-

The next day, their argument, if not forgotten, is not talked about.

Like so many other things.

She comes down, only looking slightly worse for the wear, having slept and showered seemingly. He still can’t help but notice the pallor in her cheeks, the bags under her eyes that one good night of sleep can’t get rid of, and frown tugging at her lips.

He’s sitting on her couch, reading an invitational pamphlet he brought along when she approaches him, board in hand.

“Let’s play.”

-

In the end, they’re out on the porch when she says it. A finished game is between them and the sun is just about to set, casting a warm, hazy glow around them.

“We should talk,” she says.

 _Finally,_ he thinks. But he doesn’t say it aloud, afraid he might scare her off if he says anything. He just nods.

“Benny,” she says, taking a deep breath. “I’m having an abortion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments as always are super helpful and appreciated (they motivate me lol)
> 
> Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up in a couple days

**Author's Note:**

> For all of you who read this for Beth/Benny (because let's be real, that what I read most fics for on this tag half the time lol), I promise there will be more of them in the next chapter!
> 
> Also, I tried to make this as historically accurate as possible (I literally didn't know until this fic that home pregnancy tests weren't available in the US until the 1970s)


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